My family members were safe, baruch Hashem, but our home had been completely destroyed

IN

the end, I remained in my nonreligious school until the end of high school. I wanted to become a teacher after that, but my brothers told me that the teaching salary wouldn’t be high enough and that I needed a “real job.”

My brothers had toiled and sweated for years to put food on our table. I couldn’t disregard their opinion. And so, with my heart hardly in it, I took a secretarial course and began working in the field.

One day, there was a huge fire on my block. I found out while at work. A coworker instructed me to go home.

My heart raced as I turned onto my street. Huge black clouds were billowing all around and I nearly stopped breathing when I felt my older brother, Yosef, take my hand.

“Everyone’s okay,” Yosef murmured. “Shocked, but okay.”

My family members were safe, baruch Hashem, but our home had been completely destroyed. The government branch that assigned refugees their apartments quickly gave us a new apartment.

The apartment was nice enough, but the kitchen needed to be kashered. I asked Rabbi Futerfas to come by. He came the next day with a tall and dark-skinned bochur from Iran.